In Memory of Colt: 10 Years Ago

Ten years ago, on March 10, 2016, my world changed forever.

My son was only 23 years old when acute myeloid leukemia took him from this world. Twenty-three years — such a short time in the span of a lifetime, yet somehow enough for him to leave a mark on my heart that will never fade.
There are moments when it still feels impossible that he is gone. A mother never stops being a mother, and the love I have for my son didn’t end the day he died. It continues in every memory, every quiet moment when I think of his smile, his voice, the way he laughed, and the person he was becoming.

Grief is a strange companion. It walks beside me every day, sometimes quietly and sometimes with a weight that feels impossible to carry. But intertwined with that grief is love — a love so deep that not even death could erase it.

I miss the future we should have had. I miss the conversations we didn’t get to finish, the milestones he didn’t get to reach, and the years we should have shared. But I am endlessly grateful for the 23 years I was blessed to be his mother.

He will always be part of me. His life mattered. His story matters. And his memory will continue to live on in the love that surrounds him and the place he forever holds in my heart.

No amount of time will ever change that.

Forever my son. Forever loved. Forever missed.